User:FrJohn

This picture of my family was taken this past October at my parish in Chicago. My wife's head isn't usually so white - that is just an effect of the lighting!

I am the founding Sysop of OrthodoxWiki. You can contact me by leaving a message on my discussion page, or clicking the E-mail this user link in the "toolbox" on the sidebar. I can also be reached directly by email at info at OrthodoxWiki dot org.

My contributions to OrthodoxWiki can largely be described as "metapedian" - that is, I spend most of my time here worrying about the structure and community of OrthodoxWiki rather than writing articles. That's the way it is for now, maybe that will change someday!

Ryokan #1031

Sumizome no

waga koromode no yuta narabaukiyo no tami wo owamashi mono wo

If these sleeves

of my black robewere only widerI’d shelter all the peoplein this up-and-down world

FromRyokan: Zen Monk Poet of Japan, trans. Burton Watson, p. 50

A Few Quotes

"Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair." - The Ladder 5:1

"Orthodoxy is summoned to witness. Now more than ever the Christian West stands before divergent prospects, a living question addressed also to the Orthodox world… The ‘old polemical theology’ has long ago lost its inner connection with any reality. Such theology was an academic discipline, and was always elaborated according to the same western ‘textbooks.’ A historiosophical exegesis of the western religious tragedy must become the new ‘polemical theology.’ But this tragedy must be reendured and relived, precisely as one’s own, and its potential catharsis must be demonstrated in the fullness of the experience of the Church and patristic tradition. In this newly sought Orthodox synthesis, the centuries-old experience of the Catholic West must be studied and diagnosed by Orthodox theology with greater care and sympathy than has been the case up to now… The Orthodox theologian must also offer his own testimony to this world — a testimony arising from the inner memory of the Church — and resolve the question with his historical findings." - Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology II, pp. 302-304